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Wednesday, June 24, 2015

It was warm in Los
Angeles, the Dodgers were on a winning streak and most of the
population was minding their own business. Reading ebooks was the
popular pastime for the summer; all kinds of books. But sometimes it
gets rough in the digital press world. That's where I come in. My
name is Friday—Joe Friday.

Along with my
partner, Bill Gannon, I was working out of the Literature Division,
assigned to a special romance task force. There had been a string of
people reporting the same kind of thing—an uncontrollable addiction
to a new romance short form called Unconventional Affairs. The main
perpetrator was a cool cat with a long literary rap sheet named Jay
Gaudette.

We got a call from
a Wilhelmina Vandervort in Burbank. We checked out a squad car and
headed out.

I rang the
doorbell. When the door opened we were face to face with an
attractive brunette with disheveled hair and pale skin, the kind of
skin you'd see on someone that hadn't been out of their house in
days.

“Just the facts,
ma'am. Just the facts.” I'd seen readers like her before, strung
out on Gaudette's prose. She had it bad.

“Well, I
downloaded a sample from Smashwords.com, read it, then, well, I lost
control. They're so good. The characters are amazing. The stories and
scenes are exciting. The dialogues are crisp and clean. And they're
rated PG13 and R, not X.”

“Yes, ma'am.
We've heard this before. Let me just confirm a few things with you.”

“Sure, officer.”

I ran the down the
list of what we already knew about Unconventional Affairs. “They're
short form, right?”

“Yes, that's
right. Just a few thousand words. Quick and easy to read.”

“They're about
three women—Carol, Monica and Marie—and the people in their lives
and how they learned to become amazing through love.”

“Yes. They're
wonderful women. All the characters are wonderful.”

“40+ parts?”

“They're still
being published. I can't wait for more.”

“Easy to get to
and download from Smashwords?”

“Very easy.”

“And they're
available with the You Set The Price feature, so you can pay as
little or as much as you want, even free.”

“Oh my god, yes!
You've heard of it then.”

“Yes, ma'am.
Unconventional Affairs is all over the city. And Jay Gaudette writes
in an easy uncluttered way.”

“Yes, he does.
He's so much fun to read. And there's one more thing, Sergeant.”

“What's that,
ma'am?”

“They're funny
too.”

Back in the
station, Bill asked me, “What do we do, Joe? This is a tough case.”

“Yeah, Bill. It
is. Some things are
inevitable.”

“Oh?”

“First there was
Overly Attached Girlfriend memes, then there was Justin Bieber, then
came K-pop, and now this; Unconventional Affairs by Jay Gaudette on
Smashwords.com. I think we need to surrender to the idea that
everyone—EVERYONE—is going to get hooked on it. There are going
to be billions of Wilhelmina Vandervorts out there. And there isn't
a thing we can do about it.”

Sunday, June 21, 2015

For the past year I've been writing erotic romance stories; three novels (The Unconventional Affairs Trilogy), eleven short stories and several anthologies. This was all in addition to my travel / boating lifestyle writing I had done under my real name.

All was well. My works were, generally, well received, and I had actually sold a few of them, though that was never my thrust. (No pun intended.) I wrote because I enjoyed it, and I had an opportunity to get scenarios down on paper that had been swimming around in my head for quite some time. (How Carol and Doug got together in the chapter Wehrli-gig from The Unconventional Affair is the most conspicuous of these.)

The bottom line is this--I don't want to write sex scenes anymore. I got bored with the erotic format...not the content, mind you. I love a good sex scene. But I figured out that when I wrote erotica I found that including a mandatory sex scene was, well, limiting. I found they got in the way of the story. And they HAD to be included since the erotica genre kinda requires them.

This is on me. This is my thing. All props to every erotic writer out there. And, frankly, I'm sure I'll still write and publish erotica in the future. But for now it's time for me to step back from it and write in more conventional ways.

My main thing is to fully explore my original trilogy, The Unconventional Affairs novels, along with it's associated short stories. I think there is a lot more in that little universe. It needs to be developed fully. To do this I'm deconstructing it. It's no longer three novels. It's now a 40+ part series of short stories. I've taken all the chapters, revised them, made them PG13/R rated, reordered some of them to fix a timeline oddity in the original trilogy, and generally tightened the content. I think it will be a better reading experience.

The same wonderful characters--Carol, Monica, Marie, everyone else--still live in Charleston, work at Flashworld, serve our country in the Coast Guard, and live, love and enjoy life fully. It think they're great people. I love them all. They're multi-dimensional and deserve to evolve and become whole.

As to how often the parts will be published--don't know yet. But I do know there will be a flurry at the beginning. I'm think five parts at a time. Where will they be published? For now, exclusively at Smashwords.com. How much? For now, they will be Pick Your Own Price products...let's see what happens with that.

I'm also going to be exploring some what I think will be interesting cross-platform and media things, as well as some open source ideas that I have. That will come later.

So, I hope you'll come along with me on the journey. Let's see where this takes us, shall we?